I suppose it must be wearying, waking up every morning and wondering, What accomplishment or inspirational figure must I learn to hate today? Then again, nobody told these people to walk down that road. In fact, there was a lot of yelling and waving-off going on at the time…

In retrospect, I think that Scott Walker made a bit of a mistake in throwing Liz Mair over the side like that because she hates ethanol subsidies as much as I do. It complicated Gov. Walker’s narrative, at exactly the wrong moment in time. And it turned out to not even matter, which legitimately has to eat at the guy.

I’m grabbing this image from @EsotericCD, largely because I don’t want to play ‘favorites’ on who should leave the primaries next, but: there are some candidates who need to ask themselves what their victory conditions are. Scott Walker has decided that he’s not going to win this pot, and that there’s no point throwing good money in after bad. Who will follow his example?

Well, the giant paper-mache head of Scott Walker, at least. Jim Geraghty, Tony Katz, and Fingers Malloy – all fine fellows, by the way – are having far too much fun in this clip. Watch to the end for one of the most potentially interesting demographic data points that I have ever seen in my life, by the way – and no, I’m not going to describe it. Watch.

Contra Mother Jones, though: I don’t think that Scott Walker deliberately set out to lay off those folks on Earth Day itself. Instead, I simply think that Scott Walker doesn’t give a flying leap about Earth Day one way, or the other. Which is, frankly, more entertaining.

While the article itself is rather good as a patient explanation as to why Right to Work is going to pass in Wisconsin and the electorate isn’t going to be bugged by that, this one bolded bit is simply not true.

When the left has exhausted every talking point and political strategy, it trots out uncles Charles and David Koch as a last gasp.

Hearing the word “Koch” from a Democrat means something he really doesn’t like is about to happen, and he is powerless to stop it. When it is invoked, there is likely a Republican and a bottle of champagne chilling nearby.

Most of the Republicans I know prefer bourbon or whiskey as celebratory drinks. Me, I like a nice shot of tequila, or rum. Probably because I’m an immigration squish, or something.

(H/T: AoSHQ) Mike Rowe comes across as not wanting to get involved in politics unless he absolutely has to be – a sensible notion – so I don’t mean anything scolding when I note that there’s a flaw in these last two paragraphs:

However – when Howard Dean called [Governor Scott Walker] “unknowledgeable,” he rolled out more than a stereotype. He rolled a pencil across the desk, and gave Scott Walker eight minutes to knock it out of the park.

Shot: Gail Collins of the New York Times, referring to teacher layoffs in Wisconsin that included by-all-accounts excellent teacher Megan Sampson.

…those layoffs happened because Walker cut state aid to education.

Chaser: John McCormack of the Weekly Standard, noting the implied temporal paradox.

…the big error in Collins’s piece is her claim that “those layoffs happened because Walker cut state aid to education.” As you can see in the excerpt above, Collins is talking about teacher layoffs that occurred in 2010. Walker did not become governor until 2011.

Charming. How utterly charming of Ed Kilgore: “Walker’s getting into a real groove in using the “death threats” he and his family supposedly received…” and you can just stop there. You might as well: the rest of the article’s just a whine, anyway. But isn’t it amazing how the Washington Monthly can hire a guy who is apparently deaf, dumb, blind, and incapable of using search engines?

“Read the Chilling Note Sent to Gov. Scott Walker’s Wife” The Blaze, October 2013.

Now, I get that the Washington Monthly is a political stroke magazine for progressives. That’s fine. But even the sad fetishists that read it are still actual human beings; they have their dignity and they have their pride, however meager it might be. I would scorn to lie to those people that baldly, and I don’t like them. That the Washington Monthly’s own pundits are so ready to tell the Washington Monthly’s readership the thing which is not says something extremely sad about the state of the Left these days.

I’m sorry, let me be clearer for the lurkers: This. Actually. Happened. I’d be sorry about that being inconvenient for people, except it’s not actually my fault.

PS: You may safely assume that I know that most of these threats are, by their nature, unlikely to result in a violent attack. Trust me: I’ve gotten enough of my own to know that. But what you may not assume is that getting a low-likelihood threat is somehow equivalent to getting no threats at all.

You’ve no doubt already heard that Scott Walker is, yea, indeed, running for President – with a hundred ‘Throne of Skulls’ jokes already blossoming on Twitter – but I don’t want to hit that. I want to hit a problem that I have with the Washington Post’sreporting on the subject. This passage, in particular:

[Scott Walker’s] decision to take on public employee unions in Wisconsin in early 2009 created huge protests around the state Capitol building in Madison and left the state deeply polarized around his leadership…. That anger resulted in a recall election in 2012, which Walker survived. He went on to win his reelection campaign last November by a comfortable margin, and his three victories in four years have made him a hero among many conservatives.

If you’re looking for the Scott Walker speech, here you go*. Come, I will conceal nothing from you: I skipped it at first myself. But reports came in that he was kicking it, and… yeah, Scott Walker did. A lot of emotion under control, there. Can’t say that I’m surprised about either: in retrospect, the Left may have miscalculated in allowing its pro-death-threat wing to drive anti-Walker sentiment in the Wisconsin recall and re-elections. You want to get a man focused and driven? Threaten to murder his wife. (more…)